


A temporary fix that won't fix his problems

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [15]
Category: Glee
Genre: Drug Use, Homelessness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28649049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: It's been a hundred and eighty-two days since the last time Leo saw Blaine.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character(s), Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Leoverse [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541
Kudos: 1





	A temporary fix that won't fix his problems

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a **spin-off** for Broken Heart Syndrome. This means that it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler.
> 
> written for: [Maritombola #11](https://www.landedifandom.net/maritombola-11/)  
> prompt: #25 On the last train of the day

It's been a hundred and eighty-two days since the last time Leo saw Blaine.

He knows that he was at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York and that it was an extremely cold Thursday night, that he had waited twenty minutes in the foyer before entering and getting seated, that he had purchased tickets like everybody else because for the first time in seven years he hadn't received two in the mail for free. He knows that he was there with Meredith, of course, and that it was supposed to be their nice little trip before she left for her friend Corrigan's bachelorette party weekend in Las Vegas – which is quite ironic in retrospect.

He knows all those things but he doesn't really _remember_ them. He has no mental picture of the two of them sitting and watching the play or of them waiting in line for their turn to meet the actors. When he relives that night in his head, he only sees Blaine's face the moment he saw him standing outside his green room, and the expression on the man's face throughout the moments that led to breaking up with him.

Everything else except that is a blur.

Everything that comes after that, instead, he remembers down to the smallest, most insignificant detail. He remembers every second of every minute of those hundred and eighty-two days as if they had been branded into his mind with fire. And the more he tries to erase all the time that's passing without Blaine, the more he gets stuck with it. 

Every night – and at this point every day too – he tries to dump the pain _and_ the memories by drinking way more than he can hold and losing himself into people he doesn't care about. But if he had ever been able to erase Blaine from his mind that easily, he wouldn't be here right now, sad and broken and angry, and so desperately needing a man who clearly got over him months ago. Had it been so easy to just think about something else – someone else – they would have stopped being a thing the night after they got together.

The only thing he can do is trying to keep all those feelings at bay in the only way he knows how, by stop feeling anything all together. But it's just a temporary fix – one that lasts less and less by the day – until they come back in full force, like a wave that has been mounting miles away to crash full strength ashore, and overwhelm him. And when he feels that he's about to drawn, he flees.

Sometimes he goes to Annie's house, but his best friend is rarely home because she's very busy preparing herself for her first trip to Mars. Training to be an astronaut is hard and, quite obviously, took over her life. She tries her best to be close to him – and Leo is very grateful to her for that – but she can only do so much from a mock-up lunar camp in the middle of the Nevada desert. Besides, even when she's home, her house is still in Lima, which doesn't help Leo escape his own thoughts.

Whenever he feels overwhelmed, he needs to run as far away as possible from his hometown, so he always hops on the first bus to New York, which happens to be the farthest he's able to go without panicking. It's ironic, Leo thinks, that he always goes hide right in the very city he knows Blaine lives in – because Leo is sure of that, the man would never leave New York – but he never dares to pass by the man's house, too afraid that he changed address as he changed his phone number. Leo knows that if he knocked and someone else opened the door, he would break for good. 

He usually goes to his old friend Matt, who's always been there for a laugh whenever he happened to pass by and he's now always there to pick up the pieces he manages to break himself into, and put them back together in the course of a couple of days, after which Leo needs to flee again because Matt's house starts to feel comfortable and he doesn't do comfortable these days. 

Matt works as a waiter in a restaurant and he comes back at ungodly hours every night. Leo is used to get into the building he lives in – the main door is always broken and there's no doorman – and wait for him folded into a ball in front of his door.

Matt always comes home at some point, except tonight obviously.

Leo waits three hours for him, music blasting in his ears, then he must accept the idea that Matt won't be back tonight. He must have found someone who brought him home. Someone who will find out soon enough that it takes patience, frustration and a great dose of courage to have sex with Matt, and most of the time it's not even possible. A few years ago – when he was very young and much much happier than he is now – Leo gave it a go out of sheer fascination, but no matter how slow Matt moved, it was too excruciatingly painful for him. They have stuck to a messy friendship since then.

Leo checks his phone. He's still in time to catch the last subway train to wherever River and his people are this time around. He picks himself up from the floor and pulls the hood over his head before throwing himself out in the cold again. It always amazes him how New York can be so much colder than freezing Ohio. You wouldn't say that, since his home state in winter is basically endless plains covered in ten feet of snow, but It's as if being surrounded by concrete buildings makes the weather harsher.

Halfway to the station, River sends him the address, no questions asked.

The carriage is empty except for him and another guy, who looks like he's not all there. It's not exceptionally obvious, but Leo learned how to spot the early signs by now, which is not the good thing it seems at all. It means he's been around disrupted people – that he has been one – long enough to recognize them from a distance. The glossed eyes, the slouched posture that seems to speak of tiredness but is in fact the inability to keep himself up. If that guy was to stand up now, Leo knows, he would struggle to stand. He's been like that more times that he's willing to admit.

The guy keeps looking over at him and Leo keeps his eyes stubbornly down, staring at the screen of his phone. He doesn't want to make eye contact. That always leads to unpleasant things that he does not always turn down. He's not in that much of a dark place right now, but he knows it doesn't take long for him to slip into it. He checks the address River gave him again – River didn't write anything else except that, he's not that much into messaging – and he opens the map to make extra sure he's on the right train. He has no problem admitting that he's a small town boy through and through and he's not used to the subway. He's not afraid of it, but he gets lost easily, and this is not the right moment to end up in the other side of the city.

The guy calls him a few times, and when Leo ignores him, he slides a few seats closer to make himself known better. Leo considers the idea of changing carriage, but that would imply walking past him, which even he knows isn't wise. The guy could grab him and it wouldn't be pretty. So he stays put, he keeps minding his own business, even when the guy starts calling him names because he doesn't give him attention. Luckily, despite his deranged state, he's got somewhere to be and at some point he gives up and just gets off the train.

It's another five stops before Leo can do the same.

Chamber Street on the J Line is one of the worst stations in New York. It feels and looks abandoned, even if it's not. The walls are black with mold, and yellow with leaking water or piss, or maybe both. Watching the train leave makes him feel stranded in unknown hostile territory, his last mean out of there gone forever. Suddenly, he feels very very lonely – as such places often make you feel when you end up there because you've nowhere else better to be. You should always have, after all.

He looks around, trying to make sense of the place. He's been here a couple of times but it was months ago and it's not like he was in the right state of mind to remember details. Luckily, there are very few directions to take, so he follows the arrows leading to the exit, using the torch on his phone to make light. There must be homeless people hiding around this place. He can't see them, but he can almost _feel_ them. It's an eerie shiver down his back. They're not all bad – actually, the vast majority of them only want to be left alone – but they're also not all just homeless. Some people are dangerous, and at least he's still scared for himself sometimes.

There's an abandoned building at the end of the road, some old rundown structure that used to be a warehouse. It misses part of the roof and the second floor is completely collapsed, so River and the others keep themselves on the half of the first floor that's still offering some sort of overhead cover and stability, even though the places they squat in are never really safe. An old house in Jersey almost fell on their heads once.

River's group is not a big one. There are six to ten of them at any given time, depending on the day, and they are not always the same ones. People come and go as they need, and they always have a safe place as long as they follow the rules. Leo has met almost everybody, but he usually hangs out with River alone, so he doesn't know much about anybody. Or about River, for that matter. They don't exactly share whenever they happen to see each other – Leo is never in the right state of mind for that. All he ever wants is to lose himself, and River made his mission to let him do that as safely as possible.

As he gets closer to the entrance of the building, a guy in a military green windbreak peels himself from the brick wall and walks towards him. His face is half-covered by the hood, but Leo can make out black beard and a septum. He has seen this guy around a lot.

“River told me to wait for you.”

He doesn't seem particularly happy about it, but he doesn't look angry either. He's got the same face most of them have: wary and tired, like someone who hasn't slept in a real bed for months or even years, which is probably the case for everybody in this building tonight.

Despite everything that's happening in his life right now and all the fights he's had with his dads, Leo hasn't gone three weeks without crashing at home. That is why River mocks him, calling him _Little Prince_ , and why most of the others look a bit down on him. They all think he's pampered just because he's got some money and a home to get back to. Too bad Kurt made it very clear that he doesn't want him in the house anymore – he doesn't throw him out whenever he goes back only because then he should stop complaining in a dramatic pose on the couch and actively do something about it – and he's currently living off offered meals and drinks from the people he successively has sex with. So much for the privilege.

The bearded guy leads him through a few rooms that are incredibly still standing. He walks quickly, barely keeping track if Leo is following him or not, and he doesn't say a word. Leo is okay with that, he wouldn't know what to tell his guy anyway, and it's not like you can do small talk in a situation like this. As they move through the warehouse, they pass by people thrown on old, caved in armchairs or wrapped up in sleeping beds on the floor. Everybody is speaking softly to each other, but they all stop for a moment when they see him. He keeps walking, his eyes down. 

“Ah, here you are,” River welcomes him with a smile the moment they step into the main room, some sort of common room they obtained from what remains of an old office. River nods to the bearded guy who seems very happy to vanish, leaving the burden of Leo to him. “Came by train?”

Leo nods a couple of times, sniffs, and then the reality of the situation just catches up with him altogether: being 500 miles from home, in a place he doesn't know in the middle of the night, not a person in the world currently wondering where he is or caring enough if he's still alive to text him something. It's sad and it's overwhelming and he's been bottling up since he jumped on the bus some ten hours ago. He starts crying before he can even notice, but neither him or River acknowledge that. River just pulls him in for a brief embrace. “Come on, let's find you a bed.”

There is no bed to find because he always sleeps with River, but it's like a code phrase between them. Leo can stay for a while – or at least until they can get a hold of Matt – and they will mess around, maybe even have sex. Leo will be given stronger, yet less dangerous pills than those he can get on his own. River will be there with him: a fix for the night that won't fix his problems.

But it's okay, Leo can hold onto that for now.


End file.
